Over the years, I have attended several conferences, and over the past two years, I have spoken at nearly a dozen. Conferences, though similar in the broadest of aspects, are as varied as the people who attend them. Some are multi-day, luxurious events with hot meals and big-name speakers. Others are smaller, one-day or even half-day gatherings that provide cold boxed lunches that always seem to run out of chicken salad first. Some conferences host thousands of participants while others max out at fifty. The energy of these conferences can be boisterous or contemplative or just plain boring. Some are well-organized while others are a bit of a mess. In short, conferences are not altogether different from the people who organize and attend them.
As a recent presenter, I have begun to experience these conferences in an entirely new way. After years of wonderful, terrible and carbon-neutral experiences as an attendee, I have adopted a new appreciation for how challenging it can be to provide a powerful experience for people who choose your session. Because the truth is, we have absolutely no idea who is going to choose our session. When we are selected as speakers, we are told how many people will be attending the conference and what their general profile is. And by general, I mean general, because conferences are usually open to whomever chooses to attend. It may be people who are just entering the field, people who have been in the field their entire lives and others who aren’t even in the field but somehow found their way there. Generally, that’s all we know, along with an estimate of how many people may be in our session. Always an estimate that can range from a handful to nearly a hundred depending on the conference and the participants’ interest in you.
As a presenter, not fully knowing who is going to walk through the door is challenging and difficult to plan for. The content and the message can and should be entirely different if they are intended for beginners versus experts- and no one has quite yet figured out how to cater effectively to both at the same time- but you usually do not know which you are going to get. Sometimes conferences will designate sessions that are appropriate for particular levels of expertise but even in these cases, participants are free to choose sessions regardless of how accurate their self-assessment it.
If you have gone to several conferences, or even just the one, it is likely that you have experienced a wide variety of satisfaction levels with the different sessions you have attended. Some, I’m guessing, were inspiring and powerful while others were lackluster and regrettable. Many, I would imagine, fall somewhere in between. It is challenging to know ahead of times which ones are going to be worthwhile, and you may have felt a sense of pressure trying to choose the right one. Even after careful consideration, you may have found after 10 minutes that you’ve chosen the wrong one. In that case, is it okay to leave or are you supposed to suffer through an unhelpful session to be polite? More importantly, how can you avoid this altogether by choosing sessions that will provide the most value?
Here’s the tip:
Reach out to the presenter ahead of time to learn more about the session and to advocate for what you need.
This is not something I ever thought of a as a participant, but now as a presenter, I can see where this would provide great value. And as a presenter, I would welcome this with open arms. I cannot speak for all presenters of course, but my hope is that most presenters want to provide value to their audience. This becomes infinitely easier when you can engage with your audience and hear directly from them regarding what they want. With no way of reaching out ourselves, the responsibility and opportunity become yours.
Admittedly, this has never happened to me before. I only recently thought of it after speaking at a conference earlier this week. I only had 75 minutes, which believe me, is no time at all, and I had chosen a big topic, which I was already grappling with in such a short amount of time. In the middle of my session on retaining high-quality staff, one of the participants asked about working effectively with millennials. A valid question and a very, very big one. I didn’t have time to do the question much justice, but participants had a lot to say and the discussion started to move in a direction that did not completely align with the subject of the workshop. This is one of many challenges as a presenter. You want to honor the needs of the group, but you have to consider everyone in the group. Tricky.
So, it got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be great to connect with the presenter before the conference and ask them what specifically the workshop will include, what level it is geared toward and if they would be willing to touch on a particular question or issue or concern that you have been having. Or maybe to ask a question that isn’t exactly on topic but isn’t exactly off of it either. What if you were able to be a bit more proactive and take more ownership of your learning in order to get the most out of your conference session? Doesn’t this make more sense than simply hoping for the best?
Depending on the conference you are attending, you will receive information about the various workshops and presenters ahead of time, and in some cases, way ahead of time. (A national conference I’m speaking at in February 2020 has already posted theirs.) In order to make the most of your time, do a little research and find out who the speakers are and what their message really is. After that, if you are still interested, reach out to the presenter to get a better sense of what their session is about and advocate for yourself to get what you need. This may sound presumptuous to some, and of course the presenter has every right to deny any such request, but you won’t know this ahead of time. And what if they comply? What if by sending a simple email, you can gain greater value for yourself? Why not at least give it a try?
In college, I remember being overwhelmed trying to choose classes, not having any idea how to pick five among the hundreds of choices. I was naturally enticed by the titles and subject areas, but thankfully, one of the upperclassmen gave me some of the best advice I have ever received. She told me to choose great professors, because they could make the material interesting even if it was not naturally interesting to me. On the other hand, ineffective professors had an unfortunate way of making even the most interesting topic (I’m looking at you, Philosophy of Crime and Punishment) dreadful. So, I took the advice. Eventually. But not initially, because who are you to tell me what to do? But after suffering through some pretty terrible choices that first semester, I took that woman’s advice and I have never looked back. I find that good speakers always provide value and I seek them out at every conference I attend.
It is not much different with a conference. Topic areas are important, of course, but they fall flat if the presenter doesn’t deliver them well. Why not look for the strong presenters and see what makes them strong. Find out why they are asked back year after year. There must be something to that right? If you want to go a step further, ask the conference organizers about repeat presenters, who the most popular ones are, and who receive consistently high ratings. Then show up early to ensure that you get a seat. Doesn’t that sound better than simply winging it?
A lot of time, energy and in many cases, travel go into attending a conference. Whether you are paying out of pocket or are fortunate to have your organization pay for you, there is a cost to attending conferences. In order to get the most bang for your buck, so to speak, cater your conference experience to best suit your needs. Before your next conference, reach out to the presenters ahead of time to learn more about which sessions might be a good fit for you. If you happen to be attending one of the conferences I will be presenting at, I would be absolutely thrilled.
One Response